Analysis

Analysis March 18, 2020 17:13 MIN UN Experts Detail Abuses in Yemen; Security Council Shrugs By Gregory D. Johnsen From the beginning of the Yemen conflict in 2015, the United Nations Security Council has been quick to condemn the armed Houthi movement. Initially, at least, this made sense. The Houthis are a non-state actor that seized power in a coup. The Yemeni government, led by President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is a member of the UN – in bureaucratic parlance a “Member State” – the Houthis are not, and it is always easier for the Security Council to condemn outside actors than member states. The Security Council’s cornerstone resolution on Yemen – 2216 – essentially calls on the Houthis to surrender, asking them to, among other things, end the use of violence, withdraw from Sana’a, hand over all weapons… Continue reading Analysis March 10, 2020 24:21 MIN “So now that the Houthis have won…” – Q&A with Abdulghani Al-Iryani Yemeni analyst and researcher, Abdulghani Al-Iryani, recently joined the Sana’a Center as a senior researcher after postings with the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen (OSESGY), the UNDP Mission in Hudaydah and decades of work for international organizations. Drawing on his knowledge, experience and rare vantage point on Yemeni society and political history, Al-Iryani walks us through, among other things, how the Yemen war was launched as part of a domestic dispute in the Saudi royal family, how Riyadh’s military intervention fits into a decades-long design to gain direct access to the Indian Ocean, and why most Gulf countries – including the United Arab Emirates – are more worried about Saudi Arabia than Iran.… Continue reading Analysis March 6, 2020 05:21 MIN Where is Saudi Arabia Headed in Yemen? By Thomas Juneau Saudi Arabia launched its military intervention in Yemen in March 2015, initially at the head of a coalition of 10 states, with the official objective of re-establishing the government of President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the capital, Sana’a, from where it had been expelled the previous September by the Houthis. Five years later, Saudi Arabia is now stuck in a quagmire: the frontlines have barely moved since the coalition, along with its local partners, pushed the Houthis out of Aden in the early months of the intervention. The war has been excessively costly for Riyadh, not only militarily and financially but also diplomatically. What does 2020 hold for Saudi Arabia’s role in Yemen? The scope and scale of Saudi… Continue reading Analysis March 5, 2020 05:58 MIN Founder’s Death a Blow to AQAP, but not Fatal By Hussam Radman When Qasim al-Raymi mourned his predecessor and lifelong friend, he said the 2015 US drone strike that killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi had fulfilled the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader’s dream of martyrdom. Following Al-Raymi’s own death in a US military operation this January in Yemen, his assassination has stirred debate about whether AQAP can survive without this charismatic and capable leader, who had been the last surviving member of the group’s founders. Al-Wuhayshi’s view on such matters was clear in remarks he made about five years before his death: “America is wrong if it thinks it has won by killing this (or that) commander. Jihad continues until Doomsday!” Doomsday may be optimistic, but a painful blow is not necessarily… Continue reading Analysis March 5, 2020 05:10 MIN The End of AQAP as a Global Threat By Gregory D. Johnsen More than 15 years ago, in November 2003, the United States and the then Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh defeated the first iteration of Al-Qaeda in Yemen. That victory did not last long. Less than two-and-a-half years later, in February 2006, 23 Al-Qaeda suspects tunneled out of a prison in Sana’a and into a neighboring mosque, where they walked out the front door to freedom. Among the escapees that early morning were Nasir al-Wihayshi and Qasim al-Raymi. Both men had spent time in Afghanistan prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Al-Wihayshi had been Osama bin Laden’s secretary and aide-de-camp, while Al-Raymi had been an instructor at one of Al-Qaeda’s training camps. According… Continue reading Analysis March 4, 2020 03:54 MIN Capture of Al-Hazm Positions Houthis Well, Militarily and Politically By Maged Al-Madhaji The fall of Al-Jawf to the armed Houthi movement significantly changes the course of the war in Yemen, militarily clearing the Houthis’ path to move into oil-rich Marib governorate, as well as politically and diplomatically in ongoing not-so-secret negotiations between the group and Saudi Arabia. Al-Jawf’s capital, Al-Hazm, fell at the end of February with Houthi and government officials confirming on Sunday that Houthi forces controlled the capital, though Saudi airstrikes continued. By taking the capital, Houthi forces have cleared away the last obstacle in front of the vast, largely empty desert areas across the north of Marib. The Houthi movement, therefore, gains an easy military path to the vein of Marib’s wealth – its oil wells and a refinery… Continue reading Analysis February 13, 2020 27:18 MIN How Iran’s Islamic Revolution Does, and Does Not, Influence Houthi Rule in Northern Yemen By Mohammed Almahfali & James Root Ansar Allah, the armed movement from Yemen’s north widely known as the Houthis, drove the internationally recognized Yemeni government out of the capital, Sana’a, in 2014, and since then has been adapting the country’s existing republican political structures to its interests. That the Houthis are adherents of the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam has invited comparisons of the movement’s actions to the Iranian regime and the establishment of the Islamic republic following the fall of the monarchy in Tehran in 1979. Some Houthi adversaries have gone as far as alleging that the Houthis have converted to Twelver Shiism, seek to remodel Yemen along Iranian Twelver lines and to become themselves a Yemeni version of… Continue reading Analysis January 21, 2020 23:16 MIN The War for Monetary Control Enters a Dangerous New Phase By Anthony Biswell, and Wadhah Al-Awlaqi Since September 2016, competing branches of the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) have operated from either side of the frontlines in the country’s ongoing armed conflict, with the resultant fragmentation in monetary policy increasingly undermining domestic currency stability. Recently this has led to an accelerating collapse of the Yemeni rial-based currency system altogether and driven a migration toward the use of hard currencies – primarily Saudi riyals and United States dollars – for financial transactions inside the country. From the internationally recognized Yemeni government’s interim capital of Aden, the central bank’s relocated headquarters has kept the institution’s international recognition, allowing it to, among other things, print currency and access international financial markets. Meanwhile, the central bank’s historic home in the… Continue reading Analysis January 4, 2020 11:20 MIN One of 3.65 Million Stories: A Yemeni Journey of Displacement By Sala Khaled On returning from work one evening, my house was unusually quiet. Only my sister was home, and she was packing up a few things. I knew immediately my parents had taken the decision she and I had been resisting for weeks: we were leaving the home I had grown up in. Armed fighters on every street, especially those visible from our second-story windows on the roof of the house next door, made it unwise to stay any longer. It was March 2015, and the war clearly was coming our way. I packed a few things, some clothes, my passport, university certificates, photographs, and headed through the darkness of a power outage to an empty flat my father had rented a… Continue reading Analysis November 5, 2019 07:47 MIN The Riyadh Agreement: Saudi Arabia Takes the Helm in Southern Yemen By Maged Al-Madhaji The most important aspect of the Riyadh Agreement that was signed in the Saudi capital today between the internationally recognized Yemeni government and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) is that, if fully implemented, it will mean that Saudi Arabia will assume ultimate responsibility for southern Yemen politically, militarily and in terms of security, with the United Arab Emirates relinquishing its authority over its Yemeni proxies there. The STC, the southern separatist group that has to date been funded and supported by the UAE, is to be absorbed into the Yemeni government, which itself will become answerable to a Saudi committee overseeing the implementation of the agreement. Meanwhile, UAE-backed proxy forces across south Yemen are to be absorbed into military and… Continue reading Analysis October 4, 2019 09:54 MIN A Yemeni Travel Odyssey: Unpredictable Airports and Risky Roads Passengers board a Yemenia airplane preparing to depart on September 8, 2018, from Sayoun International Airport in the Hadramawt governorate, about 600 kilometers east of Sana'a, Yemen // Photo Credit: Sala al-Sakkaf. Sitting in departures at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, a backlog of WhatsApp messages ping in upon connecting to the airport Wi-Fi – friends warning me that Aden is risky these days, ready to explode at any moment. Trembling, tears come to my eyes. If something happens to me while in Aden, will my family blame me for not telling them that I am traveling? It has been nearly a year since I was last in Yemen; I want to surprise them. And what about my friend… Continue reading Analysis October 2, 2019 05:31 MIN How Yemen Brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the Brink of Divorce By Farea Al-Muslimi Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ military intervention in Yemen, born out of limited planning and ill-defined objectives, has grown ever more complex and protracted. Geopolitical fragmentation, shifting alliances and sub-conflicts have accelerated in Yemen since the Saudi-led coalition entered the fray in 2015. At the time, the coalition said its aim was to restore the internationally recognized government to power following a coup by the armed Houthi movement. However, infighting among allies sometimes prevails over battles against adversaries. Events in southern Yemen in August epitomized this, when forces affiliated with the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) forcibly took over Aden, the interim capital of the Saudi-backed government led by President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Hindsight reveals that… Continue reading